1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method that pertains to a vehicle parking cash-payment system in which a mobile telephone can be used to commence and to terminate parking of a vehicle and in which a telephone user sends at least one code to a receiving computer via a mobile telephone system when commencing and terminating a parking period.
2. Description of the Related Art
Swedish Patent Specification No. 9800888-1 teaches a system for parking vehicles with the aid of a mobile telephone. According to this patent specification, data carried on a cash card or some like card in the possession of the telephone user and accepted by the parking system as a means of payment, and at least one user-specific reference, are stored and tied together in a database belonging to the parking company concerned.
Preferably, the user-specific reference will include part of the number of the telephone used in connection with parking of the vehicle. The telephone number is caused to be detected by the parking system computer when the telephone is connected to a telephone number belonging to the parking system.
According to one embodiment, the user-specific reference includes a vehicle-specific reference in the form of a plastic card or corresponding data carrier, wherein the reference is comprised of a machine readable code on the card. A vehicle-specific reference may, of course, alternatively be the vehicle registration number.
According to this embodiment, the cash card tied to the telephone number in the database is validated for billing purposes by detecting the telephone number in question when connecting the telephone to the parking system.
The vehicle parking system may be such as to require a car park attendant either to read-off the vehicle registration number or, alternatively, said machine readable code, when checking whether or not commencement of a parking period has been announced.
In accordance with said patent, the car park attendants are equipped with a portable communications unit which is in wireless connection with a computer belonging to the company that owns the car park concerned and containing information relating to vehicles that have commenced a parking period but have not yet terminated parking. The communications unit may, for instance, be designed in accordance with the control unit described in Swedish Patent Specification 9700054-1. In this case the car park attendant enters the identity of the parking zone concerned into the control unit, which then fetches from the computer a so-called parked car list that lists the vehicles properly parked in the parking zone in question, i.e., a list of the registration numbers of vehicles that have announced commencement of a parking period. The control unit then compares the read registration numbers with the parked car list and gives an indication when commenced parking has not been announced.
Commencement and termination of a parking period can thus be announced very smoothly and effectively by a telephone.
However, a problem arises in the case of people that do not have access to a cash card that can be used for vehicle parking billing purposes. These people cannot utilize the above-described system.
The present invention solves this problem.